Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop (14 page)

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Authors: Lee Goldberg

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“He sacrificed himself for her,” I said.
Monk nodded. “And it was all for nothing. She won’t see a penny of the money.”
“Not necessarily,” Danielle said.
“The insurance company won’t pay her off for a suicide,” Monk said.
“The only way they’ll know it wasn’t suicide is if she decides to tell them,” Danielle said.
“We’ll tell them,” Monk said.
“We can’t. We were hired by the widow and are bound by our contract with her to maintain her privacy,” she said. “Nick will give her our report and what happens after that will be up to her.”
“If she doesn’t inform the police, and cashes the insurance company’s check, then we will be accessories to a crime,” Monk said.
“Not necessarily, and only if they discover the truth, if that’s what it is,” she said. “You’re the only one who thinks it wasn’t murder. With all due respect, what if you’re wrong?”
“Mr. Monk is never wrong about murder,” I said.
“That’s for our client to decide,” she said. “As Nick always says, we provide information and our clients decide what to do with it.”
“I can’t accept that,” Monk said.
“Then maybe Intertect isn’t the right place for you,” Danielle said.
I suddenly had a horrifying vision of my Lexus, my corporate credit card, my comprehensive health coverage, and my big, fat salary evaporating after just one day.
“Let’s not overreact,” I said sternly to Danielle, then turned to Monk. “Or do anything rash. I’m sure we can smooth this out with Mr. Slade in a way that everyone can live with.”
The phone rang. I answered it. It was Nick Slade, as if on cue. But before I could bring up our ethical dilemma, he spoke up.
“Another judge has been gunned down and we’ve been hired to investigate. The client specifically asked for Monk.”
“Who’s the client?” I asked.
“Salvatore Lucarelli,” he said.
“The mobster?”
“That’s yet to be proven in a court of law,” he said. “And the judge who was supposed to hear that case is the guy who was just killed.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “I thought Judge Stanton, the judge who was killed in Golden Gate Park, was supposed to preside over that case.”
“He was,” Slade said. “Judge Carnegie was next in line, which makes Lucarelli the top suspect, which is why he wants Monk to prove that he’s innocent.”
“Mr. Monk will never work for Salvatore Lucarelli,” I said, glancing at my boss, whose ears seemed to perk up at the mention of the mobster’s name.
“You don’t know your boss as well as you think you do,” Slade said. “Monk has worked for Lucarelli before; that’s why he’s asking for him again now.”
I glanced again at Monk and, from the expression on his face, I knew that what Slade had said was true.
CHAPTER TWELVE
 
Mr. Monk and the Godfather
 
I
couldn’t believe that Monk had ever worked for the mob. But he had. He gave me all the details as I drove him down to the county jail in our new Lexus.
It had happened shortly before his previous assistant, Sharona Fleming, left him and I was hired. Someone walked into a barbershop that was a front for Lucarelli’s gambling and protection racket and killed everybody in the place.
Lucarelli and his men wanted revenge but he didn’t want to spark a mob war, so he snatched Monk off the street and pressed him into service to find out who was responsible for the massacre.
Monk took the job because he was terrified not to, and because the feds, who were staking out Lucarelli, saw this as a perfect opportunity to get a man on the inside.
The feds made Monk wear a tie with a listening device woven into it and sent him back into the heart of the San Francisco mob.
Monk caught the killer and discovered that the massacre had nothing to do with Lucarelli’s money-laundering operation, but that’s a long story that I’ll have to tell you about another time.
Monk averted a mob war but the feds were mad at him. It wasn’t because he failed to get any evidence against the mobster. What pissed them off was that Monk washed and ironed his wired tie, ruining it. If toilet seats on aircraft carriers cost four figures, just imagine what a transmitting tie must go for.
As we were nearing the jail on Seventh Street, I quickly filled Monk in on what Slade had told me. Judge Carnegie was gunned down while taking his dog on his daily morning walk. With Judge Stanton dead, Judge Carnegie was next up in the rotation to preside over Lucarelli’s trial, which made the mobster the prime suspect in both killings. Now Lucarelli’s trial was indefinitely delayed and the next judge in line was under police protection.
We parked the car and entered the county jail, a striking building with undulating curves of frosted glass and an enormous sheriff’s badge mounted on the exterior. It looked more like a shopping mall than a jail, but once we were inside, any pretense of being something else was dropped. It looked just like you’d expect a jail to look.
We went through the various security gates, a wearisome ritual that always reminded me of that long corridor of sliding, swinging, and dropping doors that Maxwell Smart walks down at the beginning of each episode of
Get Smart.
I think they did it in the movie, too.
Salvatore Lucarelli was already waiting for us when we entered the interview room. He was a droopy-faced, balding man with a double chin. He fit my image of someone’s kindly grandfather but not the most feared mob figure west of the Mississippi. There was no perceptible menace emanating from him.
He was dressed in a yellow jumpsuit, his arms and legs shackled to a chain that was locked to a metal loop imbedded in the concrete floor of the interview room. The light cast by the coiled energy-efficient bulbs gave his skin a sickly, jaundiced tinge.
Monk and I stood across from him, a table between us in case he broke his chains, lunged at us, and tried to tear out our throats with his dentures.
“Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Monk,” Lucarelli said.
“I didn’t want to,” Monk said. “But I was afraid of what might happen to me if I didn’t.”
“I would never hurt you,” he said. “You have my respect.”
“But you’ve hurt others,” Monk said.
Lucarelli gave a noncommittal shrug and glanced at me. “I see you’ve got a pretty new assistant.”
“Is that a threat?” Monk said.
“You think I’d hurt her to get at you? What good would that do me? You’d be too angry and distracted to get anything done. It’s as ridiculous as the idea that I had anything to do with those judges getting killed.”
“Is it?” I said. “They were both going to preside over your trial. Now no judge wants to do it. Your attorney is already arguing that the jury pool and judicial pool are hopelessly tainted and that a fair trial would be impossible. It could be months before you get a trial, if ever.”
“And while all that goes on, I’m going to be in a cell not getting any younger,” he said. “If I wanted to rig the trial, I wouldn’t kill the judge; I’d get rid of the witnesses, or the prosecutor, or the people who are close to them. That way the trial would be over quick and I would be out.”
“Maybe that’s coming next,” I said.
“I was just giving you a hypothetical from my years of watching
The Sopranos
,” Lucarelli said. “I’m a restaurateur. All I kill are lobsters.”
Monk tilted his head and regarded Lucarelli. “If you’re guilty of these murders, I will prove it. And I will go to the police with what I find out no matter how much you pay Intertect.”
“I know. So ask yourself this, Mr. Monk,” Lucarelli said. “If I did kill those judges, why would I do something as stupid as putting you on the case?”
 
Judge Alan Carnegie lived in the Sunset District, which, like North Beach, has a name that belies the truth. There is no beach at North Beach anymore, and while there
is
a beach at Sunset, there’s very little sunlight.
The neighborhood, bordered by the Pacific Ocean to the west, Golden Gate Park to the north, and the Twin Peaks to the east, was almost always shrouded in fog and it was no different that day.
The westernmost end of Sunset, where the judge lived, was a flat, sea-sprayed beach community composed of cafés, surf shops, bars, health food stores, bodegas, and low-slung, bleached homes of cinder block and perennially peeling wood.
The tourists all visit Haight Ashbury for a peek at the 1960s, but if you ask me, they’re going to the wrong spot. The sixties really live in the Sunset District, where just about everybody seems to be wearing sandals or flip-flops and faded T-shirts or sweatshirts. But like the name of the place, looks are deceiving. Many of the beach bums lead double lives as high-paid professionals in order to afford the luxury of a laid-back lifestyle.
I parked next to the police line on one of the residential streets. We got out of the car and shouldered our way through the crowd of reporters and lookie-loos. Let me re-phrase that—
I
shouldered
my
way and Monk cowered behind me in my wake, his arms tucked in close to his body so he wouldn’t brush against anyone.
I lifted up the yellow police tape, expecting to hear an officer yell at us, but no one did. Either they didn’t notice us crossing the line or, like the officers at Golden Gate Park, they hadn’t gotten the word about Monk.
Judge Carnegie was splayed on the sidewalk in an unnatural position, body and limbs bent at odd angles, reminding me of a broken string puppet. I guess that’s what happens when you’re shot six times and collapse with no concern about how you land. Of course, he was way past being concerned about anything.
He was suntanned and his hair was colored a hue of brown not found in nature. He wore a sweatshirt, denim cutoffs, and sandals. I wondered if that was what he wore under his judge’s robes at the bench.
The judge had one end of a leash looped around his right wrist and it appeared, from his outstretched arm and the swath of blood on the sidewalk behind him, that his dog had dragged him for a few feet. The dog was gone.
Stottlemeyer and Disher were talking to some officers and forensic techs, so they didn’t immediately notice Monk until he was already crouching beside the body.
But once the captain saw us, he marched right over, his face flushed with anger, Disher in tow.
I moved to intercept him. “It’s not what you think.”
“You mean you haven’t violated a crime scene and that isn’t Monk over there examining the corpse?”
Now I felt my hackles go up. I didn’t even know I had hackles until then.
“We haven’t
violated
anything, Captain. We’re showing the same care and professionalism that we always have at crime scenes.”
“You were official consultants then; you aren’t now. You are civilians who aren’t permitted to cross a police line,” he said. “I’ve already warned you both about that. We don’t need Monk’s help right now, no matter how much he wants to give it.”
I glanced back and saw Monk studying the trail of blood. I wanted to buy him as much time as I could.
“He’s not giving away anything, not one tiny bit of information or insight,” I said. “He’s been hired by someone who appreciates his talents and treats him with the respect he deserves. In consideration of his years of loyal service, we’re hoping you might grant him a few minutes of access to the scene as a professional courtesy.”
“Don’t you think you’re laying it on a little thick?” Stottlemeyer said.
I shrugged. “It seems to me that you need reminding.”
“Who is he working for?” he asked.
“Me,” a voice said.
We turned to see Nick Slade approaching us. He wore a perfectly tailored Brioni jacket and slacks, his shirt open at the collar. He looked like money. And even if he didn’t, his ride certainly did. His Bentley convertible was parked at the police line and there were two dumbstruck officers ogling it as if it were a Hawaiian Tropic bikini model.
“Why do we even bother cordoning off our crime scenes?” Stottlemeyer said, shaking his head. “You’re looking good, Nick. Then again, you always do.”
“You could, too, if you accepted my job offers,” Slade said. “Nice tie.”
Stottlemeyer lifted his yellow-white-and-blue-striped tie. “The Continental. Genuine polyester. You can buy two for ten dollars at Wal-Mart. You could probably afford four of ’em.”
“I don’t know why you stay on the police force.”
“I like wearing a badge,” he said.
“If that’s all you want,” Slade said, “I’ll give you one.”
“There’s more to it than that.”
“Yeah, it’s the number of figures on the paycheck,” Slade said. “It’s the freedom to do your job without the politics and bureaucracy getting in the way. It’s finally having all the resources you need to do it right.”

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